


Creative Thinking

by orphan_account



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Fluff, Food, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 22:05:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5432447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the first Christmas for Lovelace's crew on the Hephaestus Station, and they're determined to celebrate it in style. </p><p>If only they had an oven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creative Thinking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [purpleeyesandbowties](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleeyesandbowties/gifts).



It was December 24th, and Lovelace had assembled the team in the mess hall for a Council. They floated in a circle, each dressed for war. Fisher had on a slightly ratty Pink Floyd shirt. Hui and Fourier were wearing matching camo bandanas - they'd decorated the fabric with something they 'borrowed' from the engine room. Selberg wore a lab coat riddled with acid holes. Lovelace opted for her Captain's beret, secured from floating off with bobby pins. Rhea had beeped out a marching tune when they'd arrived in the room. And Lambert - well, he'd agreed to show up, and that would have to do. Lovelace cleared her throat and began the Big Speech.

"Strangers from distant lands, friends of old. You have been summoned here to answer the threat of Mordor."

Fisher shook his head slightly and muttered something about "blatant allegories for WW2", and Lovelace could sense that the hard-fought camaraderie in the room was about to dissolve into another fight between him and Fourier about symbolism in Lord of the Rings. The reference had been a bad (if hilarious) choice. It was time to change the topic to the actual matter at hand. "Jokes aside, we have a serious engineering problem, and I have assembled the best minds of our generation to help me and Hui with it. Hui, would you like to explain?"

"Well." Hui, already the shortest member of the team, shrank a little as all the eyes in the room turned to him. "We have a fresh turkey. Just out of cryo. 25 pounds at least. Kilograms don't work in microgravity. I brought it for Christmas dinner. Only we don't have an oven. So we need -"

Before he could finish, Lambert interjected, "How exactly did you bring a 25 pound turkey to the Station? Our luggage allotment was -"

Lovelace waved his interruption away. "A magician never reveals their secrets, Lambert. Hui, please continue."

"We need a way to cook the turkey." Hui straightened up as he continued. "My sister raised this turkey on her organic farm. She personally aged the meat." He gave Selberg a withering glare. "We will not atomize the turkey and autoclave the blended components into a cooked paste."

Selberg shrugged. "In Sweden, they make paste of reindeer heart, sell it in tube. Very good on toast."

"Well, we're in _America_ , Comrade." Hui put as much disdain as possible into the last word, and Fourier put an arm around his shoulder. Hui pressed against her, letting Fourier take over glaring at Selberg for him.

"No one is atomizing anything," Lovelace said soothingly. Some days she wondered how Goddard's psych profiles had ever managed to put this team on the same boat. "Not until after Christmas. We can have a vote on what to do with the leftovers then. For now, we are going to cook this turkey in one piece."

"We can use the ship's reactor cores?" offered Fisher. "If we start it now - Fourier, do we have time to fully cook it on the reactor and leave it in isolation long enough for the secondary radiation to wear off?"

Fourier's eyes lit up at the prospect of a math problem, and her fingers started tracing numbers in the air. "Not to fully cook it, but oh - the radiation should kill any harmful bacteria in the first twenty minutes or so, and we can get it to al dente by midnight, which if we're willing to have a late dinner, say, 9 pm, it should be minimally radioactive by then!"

Selberg's mouth made a thin line, his body suddenly stiff. "No radiation." Lovelace didn't ask, just reached out a hand to touch Selberg's shoulder for a moment.

"No radiation, then." Lovelace quirked a smile at a sudden thought. "What about natural radiation? A red dwarf is hot. We've got our own personal oven, sitting only a few million miles away. Fisher, what would it take to get a tether attached to the turkey? Hui, how long would the tether have to be for the turkey to receive a nice, even 350 Fahrenheit?"

"We'll want to start hotter, to seal the juices inside. 450 at least. Then we pull the tether back in..." Fisher mused. Fourier and Hui were making identical faces of dismay and agitation. Fourier's hands were waving some complex series of equations that could only translate as  _No_.

"We can't use the star," Fourier began. "Not unless we have some method to concentration the radiation."

"Very good. Very, very good," Selberg burst out, almost laughing. "Lambert has such a method. He uses it every day, receiving signals from Deep Space. Concentrating microwaves before computer translates them into sound."

"Captain!" Lambert's voice came out as a desperate squeak. "Pryce and Carter's Deep Space Survival -"

Once again, Lovelace ignored the interruption. "Rhea, would that work?"

Rhea chirped out an affirmative.

"And would it cause any permanent, irreparable damage to the Communication Officer's receiver array?"

A happy negative followed this question, which Fisher echoed with a nod. "Anything broken would be easy to fix. I'm a whiz at the exterior patch-up jobs."

"Then let's proceed. Team, to your Christmas stations."

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas to sadhipstercat! I was so excited to get you for a Secret Santa gift - you're super cool. Or at least, your blog is, which is basically the same thing. Plus, you were the first person who told me that they shipped Loveberg as much as me and Tygr do. 
> 
> I hope your Christmas day involves delicious food but fewer wild shenanigans to get it ready!


End file.
